


A Wound in the Mind

by sahiya



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Protective Tony Stark, Soul Bond, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29177475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: Where the bond should have been, there was nothing.Peter kept going back to it, poking at it, trying to get it to respond. It hadalwaysresponded. Even if Tony was trying to ignore him, he couldn’t.And now it was just... gone.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142057
Comments: 19
Kudos: 266
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	A Wound in the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing Febuwhump this year! I definitely won't be posting every day, but I think there will be seven or eight stories. Something has to make this month go faster. 
> 
> Thanks to Seekrest and Fuzzyboo for beta reading this first offering, which is for the "imprisonment" prompt.

Where the bond should have been, there was nothing. 

Peter kept going back to it, poking at it, trying to get it to respond. It had _always_ responded. Even if Tony was trying to ignore him, he couldn’t. It had been like that ever since he’d come back from the soul stone, when the bond between him and Tony had snapped into place.

And now it was just... gone. 

Peter had panicked at first, when he’d woken up strapped to a table in a bright, white room that smelled like disinfectant, with a wound in his mind where his bond with Tony should have been. He’d panicked and tried to get out, but the cuffs were vibranium, and they wouldn’t give. He’d thrashed himself into exhaustion, and on the other side of that was numb shock. 

That was where he was now. His wrists throbbed dully. He was crying still, but quietly, the tears leaking down his temples and into his hair. 

No one was coming for him. Tony had always been there, had always come for him before, but Peter knew what the gaping void in his mind meant: Tony wasn’t coming to save him, and he never would again. Tony was _gone_. 

It hurt. It hurt so much. It hurt more than losing Ben, even, and Peter hadn’t realized that was possible. It hurt so much that it dulled everything else, including the fear he should have been feeling. He almost didn’t care what happened to him now. He couldn’t think past the shock of it. 

Time passed. There was no clock in the room, and no one came in or out. He squeezed his eyes shut, prodding again at the edges of the wound. 

_Come on, kid. Get up off the mat._

It wasn’t really Tony’s voice. It wasn’t the burst of encouragement that Tony would send him through the bond before a really important AcaDec competition or when Nat had Peter pinned during hand-to-hand. It was an echo of that, a memory. And on its heels came the realization that an echo would be all that Peter ever had again, and that –– that made him want to give up. 

But that wasn’t what Tony would have wanted. 

Peter took a deep breath and shoved his grief and his isolation and his despair way down deep to deal with later and tried to pull himself together. 

What had happened, anyway?

He didn’t really remember, he realized. He remembered Tony picking him up after school, and then... nothing. He didn’t know if either of them had been able to hit their panic button before they were grabbed. He didn’t know if anyone knew they were missing. They were going to drive up to the lake house, and that was a couple of hours, at least. Pepper wouldn’t have started to worry until they didn’t show and she couldn’t reach them. 

_Oh God, Pepper. And Morgan._ Peter’s eyes flooded with tears all over again as he imagined having to tell them that Tony was gone. That he’d failed to protect him. 

_Stop that_ , he heard Tony tell him sternly. Peter took a shaky breath. All right, he didn’t remember what had happened. What _did_ he know?

He knew that whoever had him knew he was Spiderman, or they wouldn’t have put him in vibranium cuffs. 

He knew that whoever took him knew his routines, maybe even knew that Tony was going to pick him up from school. 

He could guess, from the fact that he was strapped to this table, that they probably wanted to experiment on him.

“Shit,” Peter said aloud.

That was bad news. Peter couldn’t give up, because he couldn’t give whoever it was the opportunity to find out more about his powers and maybe start experimenting on other people. It would be the super soldier serum all over again, but worse. 

He clenched his fists, testing his bonds again. They didn’t budge, didn’t even creak. 

_“People break more easily than vibranium,”_ Peter heard Natasha say in his head. _“If you can’t break out of the cuffs, wait for someone to show up. You have a very convincing face. Your best escape opportunities will come when other people are in the room.”_

He breathed out and settled in to wait. 

***

The wound in Tony’s mind where Peter should have been was like a smoking crater. 

It was all of his failures, all at once. It was every moment of abandonment, every time he’d ever felt alone, simultaneously. 

And it was made all the weirder by the fact that Peter was right in front of him, unconscious but breathing and without a single scratch on him to indicate what had happened to him. He’d spent the first weekend of his spring break from MIT with Tony, Pepper, and Morgan at the tower, and left after dinner on Sunday evening to head to Queens to spend time with May. Somewhere between the tower and May’s apartment, he’d gone missing –– but not for long. Just before six o’clock the next morning, FRIDAY’s cameras had gone dark for about thirty seconds, and when they’d rebooted, Peter was on the tower’s roof, unconscious but alive. 

Even with Peter knocked out cold, Tony should have been able to feel something through the bond. But there was nothing. It was terrifying. Tony had been in a state of terror from the moment he’d woken up in the middle of the night, unable to feel Peter in his brain where he should have been. 

“What we know is that Peter’s brain activity is normal, aside from activity associated with the soul bond connection,” Helen was saying to May and Tony. “We don’t know why he hasn’t regained consciousness. He doesn’t appear to be injured in any way, but we’re still waiting on the toxicology report. It’s possible he was drugged.”

May nodded. She looked pale and worried but a lot more with it than Tony felt. Tony couldn’t really think past the screaming void in his own head. “He’s stable then, for the moment?”

Helen nodded. “Yes. I think the best thing for us to do is to wait for the toxicology report, and to wait for Natasha and Sam to see if they can trace his whereabouts from last night to when he appeared on the roof this morning.”

May nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Cho.”

“Thanks, Helen,” Tony said numbly. 

Helen left. May nudged Tony toward a chair. “Sit down, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“It’s just... it’s awful.”

“I know,” May said simply. 

“This is why I never wanted a soul bond,” Tony said, raising his eyes to look at Peter in the bed. “Because this is... the worst thing I’ve ever felt. It’s worse than mourning him. At least we weren’t bonded then. What if he doesn’t wake up? Or the bond doesn’t come back?”

“Tony, don’t catastrophize,” May said, putting her hand on his arm. “Helen seemed very optimistic.”

“Helen _doesn’t know anything_ ,” Tony snapped. “How are you so calm?”

“I’m sorry, would it be helpful for us both to have meltdowns at the same time?” May replied, frowning at him. 

Tony sagged. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just...”

“Scared. I know. I am, too.”

Tony reached out and took Peter’s hand in his. It was warm. He held it in both his hands, trying in vain to push encouragement into the bond. “Come on, Pete,” he murmured. “Get up off the mat. Come home to us. Come home to us.”

***

Peter didn’t know how long he lay there. Long enough that his eyes started to hurt from the bright lights overhead. Long enough that his resolve faltered, and he found himself sliding back down toward despair. 

Tony was dead. No one was coming for him. 

Eventually, the door slid open. But the person who came through was not anyone Peter had expected. 

“ _Beck_?” he said, lifting his head. “What the — you’re dead!”

“Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated,” Quentin Beck said with a smile. “And while I’ve had my ups and downs recently, getting to watch the life go out of Tony Stark’s eyes as I snapped his neck made up for it all.”

Peter couldn’t help the involuntary noise he made. Beck’s smile widened. “Normally, I think we’d do a lot of tedious back and forth at this point,” he went on, pulling up a chair next to Peter’s cot. “You might demand evidence, just to be sure that Tony really is dead. But I think you have all the evidence you need.” He pointed to his temple. “Reams of poetry have been written about the tragedy of losing one’s soulmate. Tell me, Peter, what does it feel like? What metaphor would you use?”

Peter lifted his chin defiantly. There was a persistent ache in his throat but he refused to cry in front of Beck. “A wound.”

“Mm,” Beck sniffed. “A little unoriginal, but I suppose your gifts aren’t especially literary.”

“You wouldn’t understand anyway,” Peter said. “Who in their right mind would ever want to be bonded to _you_?”

“Shut your mouth,” Beck snapped. “You don’t know anything about me. Whereas I know _everything_ about you. Tony might be gone, but you still have so much to lose. Your aunt. Tony’s beloved daughter.”

Peter’s grief was temporarily obliterated by rage. “You stay the fuck away from Morgan,” he said, lifting his head to glare at Beck. “Do you hear me?”

“Oooh, scary,” Beck said, giving a mock shiver. “Or what?”

“Or you’ll get your ass kicked by the Avengers,” Peter said. “Morgan has a lot more protectors than just me and Tony. You’ll never get close.”

“I don’t know, it was pretty easy to get close to you,” Beck said. “Don’t get your undies in a twist, though, I have bigger fish to fry than Morgan Stark. And if you ever want to see the light of day again, you’ll help me.”

“No, thanks.”

“I thought you might say that. Tell me, Peter. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you have to use the bathroom?”

Peter paused. He was hungry, but he wasn’t as thirsty as he should have been. And after what had to be at least a few hours, he should have really had to pee, but he didn’t. “No,” he said honestly. 

Beck smirked. “Good. Let’s do another twelve hours down here and see how you feel.”

“What, are you planning on boring me to death?”

“Something like that.” Beck smiled. “See you in a bit, Peter.”

He left. Peter looked up at the ceiling, then shut his eyes against the harsh lights. It didn’t help much. 

The lights were going to make it hard to sleep, and now that Peter had seen Beck, he thought his odds of escaping were low. If Beck wanted him to help him with something, he guessed there might be opportunities there. And, he tried to remind himself, the Avengers would have realized by now that he was missing. Even though Tony wasn’t coming for him, it wasn’t really true that _no one_ would. 

It was cold comfort. Peter quickly realized that being left alone like this was a torture all on its own. He couldn’t stop himself going back to the wound in his mind over and over again, prodding at it even though it ached. 

He didn’t want to cry again. Beck was probably watching him, and he did not want Beck to see him cry. He kept his eyes shut determinedly, scrunching them to block out the light. He imagined that he was at home –– no, not home, at the lake house, stretched out on the sofa in the living room. 

He felt, for a moment, a warm weight against his chest. It felt a lot like it did when Morgan curled up on top of his chest for a nap while they watched a movie together. And even though he knew it wasn’t real, he couldn’t help clinging to the sensation, holding onto it with all his strength. 

***

Tony was exhausted. 

It’d been three days. Three days without a single sign that Peter might be waking. The toxicology report had come back clean, and Helen was clearly at a loss for what was keeping Peter unconscious. Natasha and Sam had turned up nothing when they’d tried to trace his steps the night before. Security footage showed him plunging from the roof of the tower, swinging five blocks south, but then, between one building and the next, in a place unobserved by any surveillance cameras, he simply vanished. 

For the first two days, they’d kept Morgan away, not wanting to frighten her. But there really wasn’t anything scary about Peter’s condition; he just looked like he was asleep. So today, Tony and Pepper had let her come down to the medbay and curl up against Peter’s chest on the bed while she watched _Lilo and Stitch_ on Pepper’s tablet. 

If he ignored the fact that they were in a hospital room, he could almost pretend it was normal. How many times had Morgan and Peter fallen asleep on the couch in the living room at the lake house just like this? How many times had Tony stopped to watch them, to revel in getting to see both his kids together like this, after believing for years that he never would?

Once the movie was over, Pepper cajoled Morgan into going back up to their apartment for a snack. Tony stayed behind; May and Happy had had to drive back to the city today, so May could work a shift and they could pick up a few things to bring back with them. Tony knew he was wearing himself out, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Peter on his own, just in case he did wake up. But he also couldn’t face any more time in the chair at his bedside. 

Carefully, very carefully, he settled himself on the edge of Peter’s mattress, shifting himself slowly onto his side so he could hold Peter –– loosely, so as not to disturb the IV and catheter lines. He rested his head on the pillow beside Peter’s and tried, for the thousandth time, to push love, encouragement, and reassurance into their bond. But the bond was gone. Whatever was happening in Peter’s head, the bond was gone. 

Tony sighed. “FRIDAY, dim the lights.” The lights dimmed. Tony closed his eyes. 

He’d managed to doze off when Helen returned. “You’re okay,” she said, when Tony started to sit up, instinctively moving out of her way as he usually did. “Just checking a few things.” Tony relaxed, tightening his hold on Peter just slightly. “Hmm.”

Tony opened his eyes. “What ‘hmm’?”

“It might be nothing,” Helen said, “but I’m getting some different neurological activity.”

“Different good? Or different bad?” Tony asked, dreading the answer. 

“I can’t tell. It’s more activity, though. Mind if we try an experiment?”

“That depends,” Tony said, though he knew that Helen would never do anything to hurt Peter. 

“It’s harmless, I promise. Could you slide off the bed? Stop touching him altogether?”

Reluctantly, Tony did as she asked. She glanced back down at her portable med scanner. “Fascinating. Neurological activity returned to baseline as soon as you stopped touching him.”

“Morgan was in here earlier,” Tony said, “between about one and three-thirty. She was touching him. Can you see if there were any changes then?”

Helen tapped the medscanner. “More activity, but not as pronounced as when you were.”

“So what does that mean?” Tony asked, hardly daring to hope. 

“I can’t say for sure,” Helen said, with her characteristic caution, “but if I had to guess –– I think that he’s closest to consciousness when someone is touching him. You, in particular, which makes sense because of your bond.”

“But the bond is... defunct,” Tony said, unwilling to use the word “dead” to describe anything to do with Peter.

“Clearly not,” Helen replied. “The bond is dormant, let’s say. It wants to wake up. It’s trying to wake up.”

“Peter is trying to wake up,” Tony said slowly. He felt, for the first time in days, a spreading optimism. Peter _was_ in there, and he was trying to find his way back to them. 

She nodded. “The question is... what’s preventing him?”

***

Despite the harsh fluorescent lights, despite his grief, despite the growling of his empty stomach, Peter slept. 

He dreamed of Tony, of course. He dreamed of Tony holding him, saying, “I believe in you, kid. Because you’re better than I ever was, and you have so much left to do.” He dreamed of sitting with him on the porch of the lake house, listening to the not-always-steady beating of Tony’s heart, to the faint whirling of gears in his vibranium arm. He felt the always-steady thrum of their bond, stretching between them, the certainty of knowing just how much Tony loved him and would always love him. 

He dreamed of the moment their bond had snapped into place on the battlefield at the compound, when Tony had hugged him. He dreamed, too, of the moment it had been cemented, minutes later, when Peter had poured all the strength, determination, and sheer will he had in him into the brand new bond to keep Tony alive. 

_I just came back to you. You’re not leaving me now!_

He woke with tears on his face. Once he started crying, he couldn’t stop. Even though he knew Beck was watching, even though he knew he was probably relishing every hitched breath, he couldn’t stop. He cried until tears and snot ran down his face, because of course his restraints meant he couldn’t wipe them away.

He thought that Beck would return to taunt him, but he didn’t. He didn’t know how much time passed, but it felt like a lot. Longer than it should have been. Long enough that he started to wonder if Beck was ever coming back.

What if he wasn’t? How long was Peter going to wait? What was keeping him here? The vibranium cuffs, sure, but the truth, Peter admitted to himself, was that he hadn’t tried that hard to escape. Why hadn’t he tried to escape? _Really_ tried?

Tony would want him to try. Even if leaving this room meant that he was going to live the rest of his life with a scarred-over wound in his psyche and in his heart, he had to try. 

He tugged at the vibranium cuffs. They were just as tight as when he’d tested them before, and he’d never been very good at slipping restraints. He was flexible, but his joints didn’t dislocate easily, and it _hurt_. But he had to try. He was done waiting. He had to get out of these cuffs and out of this room. 

***

After Helen left, Tony climbed back up on the bed and curled himself carefully around Peter. He stayed like that all night and slept surprisingly soundly, all things considered. In the morning, May and Happy returned, and he let May have a turn holding her nephew. He showered and had breakfast with Pepper and Morgan before heading back down to the medbay.

Helen was there with her portable medscanner. “I think your bond is the key,” she said when Tony came back in. “There is definitely an increase in brain activity when May was touching him, but it’s still less than there was with you. It has to be the bond.”

Tony looked at May almost apologetically, but she just shook her head and ceded her spot on the bed to Tony. She took the bedside chair and held Peter’s hand instead. 

Tony sat up more this time, and Helen helped him arrange the IV line and catheter so he could hold Peter against his chest. He ran his fingers through Peter’s curls again and again, rubbing the spot at the base of Peter’s skull where he sometimes got headaches. 

He frowned. There was a bump under Peter’s skin. It was small and hard. It could have just been a mole or a blemish, but it didn’t feel like either. It didn’t feel... normal. 

“Tony?” May said. “What’s wrong?”

“Helen, come here,” Tony said. He gently turned Peter’s head to the side and pushed his hair out the way. “Look at this.”

Helen bent, examining the lump. “That’s interesting. It didn’t show up on any of the scans.”

“What is it?” May asked. 

“Something is under the skin.” Helen straightened. “I’m going to get a local anesthetic, but it shouldn’t be very hard to extract it. It seems to be situated superficially.”

Tony looked up and caught May’s gaze. His own hope was reflected there. If this was what was keeping Peter unconscious –– trapped in his own mind, as Tony had come to think of it –– then removing it might be the key. 

Helen returned in less than five minutes with a nurse. Tony and May stood back as they turned Peter onto his side and shaved the skin around the bump. Helen gave him a shot of local anesthetic and then picked up a very small scalpel. 

Tony looked away, because even after everything he’d been through, he was a little squeamish about watching someone cut into his kid. May –– who as far as Tony knew wasn’t squeamish about _anything_ –– watched. 

“Got you,” Helen murmured. Tony looked back just in time to see her use a pair of tweezers to pull something out. She dropped it into a waiting dish of alcohol. 

It was like the floodgates opened. Tony gasped, his knees almost giving out as the bond between him and Peter came roaring back. It was too much to parse at first, just a maelstrom of emotion, but eventually he was able to sense anger, determination, fear, and underlying all of them, an ocean of grief.

 _I’m here, kid_ , he sent down the line. _I’m here. Come back to us. Please, come back to us. You can do it._

***

The vibranium cuffs cracked. 

They shouldn’t have. They’d been rock solid just a few seconds earlier, but then they all but shattered, and Peter’s hands were free. He sat up, ready to try and break the cuffs holding his feet, and found himself paralyzed by a sharp pain in his head, right at the base of his skull. He cried out, holding his head in his hands. 

And then the dam in his head broke and his bond with Tony flooded his mind, wiping out the pain, wiping out the fear and the anger and washing everything clean. 

_I’m here, kid. I’m here. Come back to us. Please, come back to us. You can do it._

Peter gasped. Tony wasn’t dead. Tony _wasn’t dead_. 

He looked down at the chains holding his ankles. They didn’t look like vibranium anymore, he realized. They looked like rusted-out metal. 

He reached down and pulled them apart with his bare hands. 

***

Peter woke up all at once. One moment he was lying there, eyes closed, face slack, and the next he was looking up at them, fully aware. 

“Tony? May?” he said, looking up at both of them. 

“Hey kid,” Tony breathed shakily, sending a pulse of reassurance down their bond.

“Hi, baby,” May said, and leaned down to hug him. “Welcome back.”

“What happened?” Peter asked, brow furrowing. “How did I get here?”

“You’ve been here at the compound for four days,” Tony said. 

“No way, I was only –– it was only a day? Maybe two?” Peter shook his head, then winced, hand coming up to touch the base of his skull. 

“Don’t,” Helen said firmly, catching his hand. “You’ve got surgical glue that’s still drying back there. We removed the device that was keeping you unconscious and suppressing your bond with Tony.” Using tweezers again, she picked up the object and held it up for them all to see. It was smaller than a pea and metallic, glinting faintly in the lights of the medbay. 

“What the hell?” Peter said, staring at it. “I’ve been here the whole time?”

“Almost,” Tony said. “It’s Friday now. You left the tower Sunday night and never made it home.”

“I don’t... remember that,” Peter said, frowning. “I remember you picking me up from school –– from Midtown –– and then we both got grabbed on our way up to the lake house. I thought... I thought they’d killed you,” he added, looking at Tony. “He told me he had, and I couldn’t feel the bond, so I believed him.”

“Who’s he?” May asked, leaning forward. “Do you remember who did this to you?”

Peter’s eyes widened. “Beck. It was Quentin Beck. At least... at least that’s who was in my head. But none of it was real, was it? So maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he’s just my own personal boogeyman.”

“Maybe,” Tony said, eyeing the device in Cho’s tweezers. “But this does feel familiar. It’s a little like the BARF technology, just smaller and more evil.”

“But he’s dead,” Peter said, almost but not quite as a question. “He’s been dead for two years. Right?”

“That’s definitely what we thought,” Tony replied. 

Peter covered his face with his hands. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not, sweetie,” May said, reaching over to rest a hand on his knee. “This is real. You’re real.”

“I know,” Peter said bleakly. “But the illusion felt real, too.” He looked at Tony. “He found a way to suppress a soul bond. I didn’t think anything could do that.”

“Not completely,” Tony said, moving to take Peter’s hand in his. “He couldn’t suppress it completely. And you broke out of there. You were so strong, Pete.”

Peter shook his head. He leaned into Tony’s chest, and Tony brought his arms up to hold him. He caught May’s gaze over Peter’s head. She looked just as worried as he felt. It had taken months for Peter to fully recover from his encounter with Beck, and Tony knew that he still made regular appearances in Peter’s nightmares. None of them had ever expected to have to deal with him again. 

“Oh God, I have to head back to MIT on Sunday,” Peter suddenly said. 

“Not if you don’t feel up to it,” Tony said immediately. “We’ll work something out. We’re not sending you back there if it’s not safe –– for you and for the school,” he added, because his own personal safety wasn’t something Peter had ever cared much about. 

Peter nodded reluctantly. “Can we go up to the lake house? All of us?”

“Whatever you want, kid,” Tony said, pulling him close again. “Whatever you want, wherever you want. I’m not going anywhere and neither is May.”

“Promise?” Peter whispered, looking up at him. He sounded much younger than his eighteen years just then. 

“I promise, Pete,” Tony said, stroking a hand through his hair, carefully. “I promise.”

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: Insomnia!


End file.
